143 ‘Whatever I Think of Galatasaray I Think of Exhibitions’Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu

197 Catalogue

269 Biographies

Opened on 1 September 1868 upon the orders of Sultan Abdülaziz, while Mekteb-i Sultani was conceived as a training ground for bureaucrats who would staff the state's newly-designed agencies, it was thought that its students should be inculcated in the ways of international diplomacy and European culture. Among the lessons that were included in the curriculum with this idea in mind were European art and literature and it was due to their influence that major artists emerged both from Ottoman-period Mek-teb-i Sultani and from Republi-can-period Galatasaray Lycée. Because of the role that they played in the initial formative stage of paint-ing among the Ottomans, the art instruction provided at Mekteb-i Sultani, the instructors and their artistic personalities, as well as the artists who studied there are all matters of importance. The primary aim of this exhibition was to draw attention to an attitude towards education which, for over a century in the years from 1868 to 1968, upheld strict standards of quality, fostered an undying love of art from generation to generation, and transformed that love into professionalism.